[70] 19-20. que le temps finira par nous faire oublier: which time will make us gradually forget.
[70] 26. s'efforçait... à se ressaisir: tried to regain his composure.
[72] 15. communard: see note on p. 66, l. 3; a soldier in the army of the commune.
ENGLISH PARAPHRASES.
FOR RETRANSLATION INTO FRENCH.
[L'aventure De Walter Schnaffs.]
[L'oncle Sambuq.]
[L'histoire La Plus Drole.]
[La Charge Des Morts.]
[Le Petit Homme Rouge.]
[La Bataille De Frœschwiller.]
[Le Mauvais Zouave.]
[Un Mariage.]
[Pour Le Ruban.]
[Parole D'honneur.]
L'AVENTURE DE WALTER SCHNAFFS.
THE hero of this story was with the German army during the last war between Germany and France. He hated guns and cannon and he missed very much his pretty wife and his children. He preferred to get up late and go to bed early and, above all, to eat lots of good things and drink beer. But now that he was [a] soldier, he was forced to pass the night on the ground, well wrapped up in his military cloak; and he wept often, thinking of the debts which he had contracted. If he was killed there would be no one to bring up his little ones. At the beginning he was afraid of the bullets which whistled close to his head, and he passed his entire time in an extreme terror.
When he was in the north of France, he was sent with a few companies to see if there were any French soldiers in the neighborhood. Everything was calm and he was walking along without thinking of the danger, when suddenly a band of guerrillas came out of the woods and fired at the Germans.
Walter Schnaffs knew that he could not run as fast as the Frenchmen, because he was so fat, and, looking around for a way to retreat, he perceived a ditch almost covered with dry brush-wood. He jumped in and fell to the bottom of what was really a deep hole. Soon all the noise of the struggle stopped, and night came on.
The poor fellow did not know what to do. He was horribly frightened, and he began to be very hungry. He still wore his uniform, and he thought to himself: "If I were only a prisoner of war, then, at least, I should not be hungry, and I could pass my time until the end of the war without any apprehension of bullets and sabres."